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RITUAL
By Venard McLaughlin
These are your altars, Man:
A snouted, sweating, steel-clad tank
With smoking jaws and bloody flank,
A-prowl in fluid deadly rank.
This is your altar, Man.
And high above--the echelon
Intent with death to hurtle on
To make of living, carrion.
This is your altar, Man.
Beneath the [sea?] a long steel shark,
In silence through a gray-green dark,
To rise, to kill, to find a mark.
This is your altar, Man.
Those well-sung pits dug deep in mud,
Anointed fresh with human blood.
One added stream to worldwide flood.
This is your altar, Man...
This your sacrifice:
The temples tall youth might have made.
The temple thoughts now left unsaid;
The lilies of men that might have stayed.
This sacrifice, O God.
The songs, the words, they might have sung.
The secrets tread they might have wrung
From earth: the courage of the young.
This sacrifice, O God.
The better world their lives could find
In tune with life and God's own mind.
The course of stars they might have lined.
This sacrifice, O God.